One Person Killed, Another Injured, in Vegas Strip Explosion

May 7, 2007 at 2:46 PM EST - Updated July 10 at 10:36 PM

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A device left in a casino parking garage exploded early Monday, killing a hotel employee who picked it up, authorities said.

The man was removing the device from atop a car when it exploded shortly after 4 a.m. on the second floor of a parking behind the Luxor hotel-casino, said Officer Bill Cassell, a police spokesman. He declined to describe the device, but said initial reports that it was a backpack were wrong.

Police said the blast was not a terrorist act but an apparent murder of a Luxor employee. No threat had been made against the Luxor, Cassell said.

"We believe the victim of this event was the intended target," Cassell said. He said another hotel employee narrowly escaped injury when the device exploded.

Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage Inc., which owns the Luxor, said he could not confirm that the victim was an employee.

Aerial video showed no apparent damage to the parking structure, where entrances were blocked while police, firefighters and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents investigated.

There was little damage around the vehicle and the hotel was not evacuated, police and a hotel official said.

Cassell said the case was being investigated as "a homicide with an unusual weapon."

The Luxor, a pyramid-shaped hotel at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, has more than 4,000 rooms and 6,000 employees.

Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were involved in the investigation, said ATF Special Agent Nina Delgadillo, regional spokeswoman for the agency in San Francisco.

Aerial video from news helicopters showed no apparent damage to the parking structure, where entrances were blocked while police, firefighters and ATF agents went from vehicle to vehicle with bomb-sniffing dogs.